Reading in 2014

Written by Benjamin Reitzammer on Mar 18, 20158 minute read

2014 was the first year, that I consciously set myself a reading
goal. Although I knew it was a bit ambituous, I couldn’t
bring myself to throw something out. I figured I’d prioritze over the year. And it kinda worked out well.

And of course, when you set yourself a goal, there should be a review at some
point in time.

So here are the books I actually read in 2014, in the order I read them:

Non-Fiction

Actually I listened to the audio-book, which was a great way to experience it.

Looking back though, I couldn’t really get much out of it. It’s a good book
but apart from knowing about and sometimes working with the model of teams
going through three phases, nothing more really stood out.

“Ship It!” is a very concise and good read. It describes several very pragmatic
practices on how to lead software projects. Even though that sounds
like project management, the book is not in the least about project management.
It’s more like a good friend’s advice on how one might make software projects
sucessful.

That I admire John
Allspaw isn’t a secret
anymore. This book reinforces my opinion about him. Even though I couldn’t
directly apply the main part of what the book is about, it’s a nice read and
contains a lot of foundational knowledge about modern operations of software
products.

I expected not much, when starting this book. After all, DHH’s writing style and
opinion is … let’s say, well known.

In the beginning there was no surprise. Without actually checking it, the first
half of the book seemed to be excerpts of Signal-vs-Noise blog posts about the
topic. The second half wasn’t a mindblow either but at least contained some new
stabs at the topic.

Either way, if you’ve been living under a rock in the last years, then this book
is a nice intro into the topic of remote work.

This book was among the most influential for me in 2014. Oren, who also curates
the much recommended Software Lead Weekly
newsletter, has put together a super-concise
and at the same time ultra-helpful list of concrete advices, that
you can put to action almost immediately after reading. At the same time I’ve
re-read so many passages of the book already, and will probably continue to do
so.

I like Ben. He is partner at a venture firm (vc, vc fund, or whatever the
correct term for that is) with a controversial
partner,
but who wants to judge other’s life choices.

Ben’s writing is always clear and to the point. The stories he sprinkles into
his advice are usually captivating and help illustrate his points. This book is
no exception and even though it contains quite some older blog content of his,
it’s still or even more so an incredibly easy and at the same time useful read
on management and leadership. What I found remarkable is that even though Ben
clearly addresses CEOs as readers throughout the book, a lot if not all of the
points he makes are applicable to non-CEO managers and leaders alike.

Sometime in 2014 I stumbled across several mentions of “Managing Humans” and
enough time had passed (omg, is it six years already?!) since my last read and I
thought should reread it. I did this over several midday breaks on several
weekends, so I didn’t actually read the whole book but only the parts that were
the most interesting to me at that point.

It’s a good book, that contains some solid advice. But even though Michael is an
outstanding writer I found the advice buried under too many story details.
Additionally a lot of advice seems only applicable to very special situations
that you and your team have to be in in order to really make use of them.

This is one of those gems where you think, “how did I not think of this myself
and earlier?”.

If you’re thinking about how you can take more useful notes, be it during
meetings or whirl listening to a conference talk, then go read it. Or even if
you’re just thinking about how you can visualize better.

It’s a tremendously well structured and beautifully designed book, which could
be read in one go, but will linger on your mind for so much longer.

Bonus points for giving me the best excuse ever to take a stab at my “conference
& ted talks to watch” list.

Sorry, for that german content here, but this book is one of the three books in
2014 that instantly made it onto my “left an outstanding and long-lasting
impression”-list.

It’s about applying the non-violent communication principles in your family,
especially in the relationship with your children, and really helped me
understand and handle a lot of situations in our daily family life.

This one is the third book on my already mentioned “left an outstanding
impression”-list. Even though I haven’t finished it yet, it already made me
aware of so many problematic things and circumstances in my daily life. Not the
least important of them the realization that we really do live in a patriarchy.
Reading this book in conjunction with having kids in kindergarten age, it’s
extra remarkable how much of our culture and society revolves around dominating
others by way of some kind of violence. Isn’t it striking that many if not all
three year olds already know how firearms are supposed to work?

In any case, this is a must-read for anybody who is wondering what this
feminism-thing is and what role men can have in it.

As you can see I read quite some fiction novels. I especially liked Daniel
Suarez’ books and also enjoyed “China Mountain Zhang” quite a bit because it was
really different from the other ’standard’ as Sci-Fi novels. But I basically
enjoyed all of them. Which may be related to the fact, that are all from only a
small set of authors.

Unfinished Books

I have a bad habit of reading a lot of books in parallel, and sometimes pausing
a bit longer on some of them. I plan to get back to most of them at some point.

But I also have the good habit of not finishing books that I don’t deem
worthwhile. Which is not necessarily a judgement on their quality but often
simply means, that they are not interesting or important enough for me right
now.